Theory of intervening opportunities attempts to describe the likelihood of migration. Its hypothesis is that this likelihood is influenced most by the opportunities to settle at the destination, less by distance or population pressure at the starting point.

Stouffer

Samuel A. Stouffer

Samuel Andrew Stouffer was a prominent American sociologist and developer of survey research techniques. Stouffer spent much of his career attempting to answer the fundamental question - How does one measure an attitude?Dr...

's law of intervening opportunities states, "The number of persons going a given distance is directly proportional to the number of opportunities at that distance and inversely proportional to the number of intervening opportunities."

Stouffer theorises that the amount of migration

Human migration

Human migration is physical movement by humans from one area to another, sometimes over long distances or in large groups. Historically this movement was nomadic, often causing significant conflict with the indigenous population and their displacement or cultural assimilation. Only a few nomadic...

 over a given distance is directly proportional to the number of opportunities at the place of destination, and inversely proportional to the number of opportunities between the place of departure and the place of destination. These intervening opportunities may persuade a migrant to settle in a place in the route rather than proceeding to the originally planned destination. Stouffer argued that the volume of migration had less to do with distance and population totals than with the opportunities in each location. This is in contrast to Zipf's Inverse distance law.

There are links with Ravenstein's laws of migration 2, 3 and 4.